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Over the past few months, a dearth of postings here could well have been taken to mean a number of different things – maybe I’ve been swimming in work, or busy around the house, or enjoying a little extra time pedaling, or maybe just lazy or uninspired. But in the case of the last 8 days, it’s meant I’m traveling. Kelly and I just returned home from a whirlwind trip to California for “summer break ’08″, and we had an awesome time.

In keeping with my privacy policy of only blogging about trips upon my return, I’ll be posting some photos (captioned, with any luck) and a few notes and commentary about our experiences soon.

For now, I’ll just mention two serendipitous “grazings” that happened while we were on the West Coast, that are both interesting (due to the “small world factor” they epitomize) and a touch disappointing (because they could have ended up as fun connections had we only known). First, we “grazed” Ken Starks, Larry Cafiero and the rest of the crew of Lindependence 08 on Wednesday and Thursday, making our way up the California coast from Monterey to Napa. If we had an extra day and could have worked out the logistics, I would have loved to have stopped in to Felton and been part of the truly awesome work they were doing there, evangelizing Linux and software freedom. Just a few hours later, we “grazed” Garrett McCord, author of Vanilla Garlic, as he attended and reported from the Taste3 culinary convention in Napa. Though neither he, nor his foodblogger traveling companions, would know me from Adam, it would have at least been fun to meet them in person and gush about how much I enjoy reading their blogs. Sure, maybe they would have looked at each other with raised “who is this weirdo” eyebrows just before calling security, but if their writings are any evidence of their friendliness, my guess is they would have just absorbed Kelly and I into their conversations and counted us as newfound friends by the time we parted company.

All that said, we had a wonderful trip, missed connections or none. We caught up with family and friends, saw some amazingly beautiful places and things, ate more than our share of truly delicious food, took scores of photos, and most importantly enjoyed some quality time reconnecting, relaxing and recharging.